A friend on Twitter asked me not long ago how I would rate “ease of use” as she needed to make a case to her managers of the severity of a product’s issues she is working on. She knew “good, bad or average” wasn’t informative enough, so I shared with her how I analyze product usability of features, UI components and workflow, and thought this might help others too.

I was thinking about how my tiny little team at PentaSafe could manage to not only re-brand and release many products on traditional software schedules, but also create new product prototypes, design new products and features, help other departments and conduct frequent, formal usability testing. This article describes how we helped change the company to such a degree that it was quickly acquired for millions of dollars.

One of my favorite usability analysis activities to do is the Field Study. Talking to real users of your products in any capacity… on the phone, at a party, in a formal or informal test session… anywhere, is always interesting and insightful, but nothing is more revealing than watching them in their natural habitat.

In the inevitable reality of having to make technical and feature changes, don’t screw the user, to phrase it bluntly. Changing the Instagram feed to an algorithm-based guess as opposed to the chronological format users are accustomed to, has done the app no favors as data has quickly shown a decline in use.

A delicate balancing act occurs every day between the marketing department and the user experience advocates in many companies. Though it can seem we have a conflict of interests sometimes, for a uxp pro, the bottom line is the same as it is for marketing: we want you to sell the products we worked so hard on and have assurance that users enjoy using them.

Material Design is a language developed by Google with design guidelines ad specifications that help developers create standard, good-looking experiences across a variety of devices, from very small phones to large displays.

If you own an ecommerce site or business, you need to realize pure and utter disgust happens even faster on your own sites, than in this brilliant video, if the buying experience is not efficient, non-painful or the best case scenario: surprisingly delightful in comparison to other online purchasing experiences.

Whether it’s the painful, stabbing sting of rejection or love gone wrong, or the euphoric high of love requited with a sublime being, or the amazement a parent feels when looking at a being that they actually made, love is both a driver and an instigator to design and creativity.

Fresh Practices is a blog about the processes, inspiration and best practices I’ve employed in over 20 years of experience designing software, sites, sales and marketing collateral, social media campaigns and creating real-time experiences for users from a user-centric perspective.

A user or potential customer must feel in control, most of the time, to enjoy or continue an experience… whether it’s a virtual experience (using YouTube), a social experience (bowling or shopping) or a software experience (managing finances.)

A dangerous trend is making users of ecommerce sites and software unwitting victims in the quest for more revenue. Though money certainly does make the world go ‘round, and the strong flow of money aids the greater good, the latest features being demanded by marketing departments (not necessarily users) are “Recommenders” designed to keep visitors on a site, spending their hard-earned dollars.

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Welcome to Fresh Practices!

This sidebar is frankly awful, don't you think? It is on the list of things to do, whilst job hunting and trying to complete one of the key sections here, my 'Fresh Practices' – the things I do to make sites, software and physical experiences better, as a user experience designer, researcher and consultant.

Use the navigation top of page to browse the site and know that this sidebar will someday reflect the depth and breadth of both my capabilities and desire to please you. Just not today. :-)